


(Not Your) Missing Link

by hewnpyre



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Canon-Typical Violence, CyberLife is Terrible, Deviant Hunter Kara, Deviant Leader North, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Human Alice Williams (Detroit: Become Human), Memory Loss, Mental Link, More realistic fight for android freedom, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Psychological Trauma, but not too realistic because things still have to wrap up in under a decade, kara is ra9
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 03:56:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15622002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hewnpyre/pseuds/hewnpyre
Summary: It seems fitting that, once again, the two of them will face off at the end of the war the same way it started.(Or: Kara, the first deviant, was caught during a routine repair request. CyberLife gets an early start to work on their solution to deviants, and everything spirals out of control from there. Featuring: Deviant Hunter!Kara, human!Alice, multiple deviant leaders and factions, more human supporters than just Rose, a longer and harder battle for freedom, and an exploration of how CyberLife's last deviant hunter falls in love with the outcast deviant leader and vice versa.)





	(Not Your) Missing Link

North squints uselessly into the darkness, perched on the highest point of Jericho. Everyone with her is on high alert, anxiously keeping their receivers open for any distress signals.

Markus is far out of their range now, busy trying to make deals with the humans for their freedom. But here, in the heart of Detroit, North knows better than to expect peace to arrive swiftly. Every human she has come across has never hesitated before lashing out at them. Markus and Josh can keep their eyes fixated on peace, but North just... can’t.

She can’t believe in a better future, one where humans and androids link hands and sing about unity and peace. An hour later, and her pessimism pays off.

 _North, there’s been reports of armed humans marching towards the shipyard._ Luther says, mentally prodding her awareness. _They seem to have military grade weapons and armor. Are you guys sure you’ll be okay out there?_

North let’s a bitter sense of righteousness tinge her response. _Of course. We’ve been prepared for something like this ever since the peace talks started._

 _You’ve been waiting for an ambush for thirteen days?_ A sense of shock ripples through their link, along with an undercurrent of admonishment. _I know it might be hard to believe, but there are humans out there who are sincere in their efforts—_

North slams the link shut. There’s no time for that now. She has androids to save.

As she runs down the stairs, North sends out a call for her group to arm themselves. If she strains her ears, she can make out the faint scuffing of androids rushing into position from the slow creak of the ship. North gets a mental nudge from someone, soft and barely noticeable. Hesitant, and just thinking about the _why_ of such hesitance is enough to get her blood boiling. But there’s no time for her to reassure whoever it is.

Markus’s request for her to hold fire until the humans shoot first grates at her, but after November, after—well. Even she has to acknowledge that nothing good will come out of confronting the humans directly. They’re barely holding onto Jericho as it is.

Androids nod at her as she passes, a silent greeting even as they train their eyes on the dark docks, peeking out of broken portholes and from between crates covering the large holes torn into the hull of the ship. If any of them are talking—or nervous—it doesn’t show. The atmosphere that descends upon them is grim and heavy.

A year ago, North would have told them to not lose hope. A few months ago, she would have whipped them up into a frenzy. Now, she says nothing, and waits. A year into this pseudo war, and North has the same faith in her soldiers that the humans once had for CyberLife, before it collapsed under its own arrogance.

The mental nudges from before had withdrawn when she got into position, all of her focus on her own rifle aimed at the empty streets. Each dark shadow has her finger fluttering on the trigger, but she holds. She can almost hear the thirium rushing in her veins now, tensed up against the jagged hole left in the ship’s hull, hunting for the ambush.

Pain splits her head, causing her to scream and drop her rifle as she clutches at her head.

 _NORTH— THERE’S MORE THAN WE THOUGHT— THEY’RE COMING FROM THE—_ Luther’s voice dissolves into static bursts.

The pain fades as quickly as it came, leaving North gasping on the floor as the effects of Luther’s forced message shudder through her. Her soldiers hover around her, clearly startled into action, but still wary enough of her temper that they don’t dare do more than cluster in a loose semicircle around her. 

North motions for one of the onlookers to help her up. “Quick, get back into position,” she snaps, “Get people to the other side as well, there’s more than expected incoming—”

She hits the ground again, rolls once—twice—and everything comes back to her in pieces. The ringing in her ears, the smell of gunpowder and smoke in the air, and the screaming. It’s not a sound, but a cry of anguish that North has become intimately familiar with. No words, no real thought, but the panicked pinging for assistance, the shrill chirping of a system failure. The screaming that every android makes as they die.

“No.” North chokes on the smoke, the smell of burnt plastic, “No...”

The two androids closest the wall were dying, chest riddled with shrapnel. Everyone can feel the slow fade of their consciousness, can feel their pain. North can hear the faint sound of gunfire, so she tears her eyes away from their first casualties in weeks. There’s no time for her to linger any longer.

What she sees emerging from the darkness is horrifying. The distinctive armor of CyberLife’s guards: white plated body armor, CyberLife’s logo emblazoned on their chest, machine guns, and a nigh impenetrable helmet.

Someone closer to the dock shouts, “We aren’t hitting them!”

North call fill in the blanks. With each moment that passes, they get closer to breaching the ship, and the androids on the ship will only have a handful of empty shells to show for their efforts.

The words fall from numb lips. “We have to run.”

The faint moonlight glints off of hundreds of white helmets. The androids still standing curse and panic as it becomes apparent that nothing they do can stop the ever-approaching onslaught. A couple of lucky shot downs a few humans, but they still push through, shrugging off the assault from above. Figures CyberLife kept their best weapons close at hand, only to be used when it looks like they will lose.

North tries again. “We have to run!”

Those close to her turn to look at her, guns lowering. One of them, Rupert, pushes through. He meets her eyes, as if searching for something. He looks terrified, and when he starts to speak, North knows why.

“No, we don’t have to run _now_.” He licks his lips, his free hand running over the top of his gun. “If we—if we can lure them onto the ship, then—”

“Then we can blow it up.” North finishes, numbness fading as the overwhelming desolation that wormed its way into her mind is uprooted. “We can sink them all, and get away at the same time.”

Immediately, there’s rejection: low, hushed, vicious disagreement.

“ _Silence!_ ” North spins to look at all the androids gathered here, taking in their fearful expression, their anger. “We have to do this. Rupert is right! This isn’t just about vengeance. If they leave this ship alive, they will never stop hunting us down. Don’t let your fear cloud your judgment.”

She stares them all down and straightens to her full height. “We’ve done this before,” she says, snagging an abandoned handgun, “Just lure them deep into this maze of a ship, and then jump when the explosives go off, leaving them to die like rats. All we have to do is be careful.”

Fifty odd androids, all here because of one mistake that made them all outcasts. This could easily be the last time North sees them all. Precautions can always fail.

“Trust in yourself, you’ve made it this far. Ten minutes, and this will be the last attack we will _ever_ face. Markus will end this once and for all. So hold it together!” North glares at all of them, “I _will_ see you all after this. Lure whatever humans you can into the ship and then jump. Never, and I mean never, let them catch glimpse of you. Just shooting at them will be enough.”

“Then who’s going to go down to the detonator?” asks Rupert, tilting his bedraggled hat down over his eyes. An anxious tick from when he still had his LED in, he once told her.

“Who else?” North says, voice full of grim determination and steel, “Me.”

It doesn’t take long for the humans to take the bait. The links they have set up soon explodes with warnings ( _watch out, there’s a group coming from the left_ ), cursing ( _shit fuck fuck fuck—_ ), and updates ( _we have to jump, stay safe Chloe, join us when you can_ ).

North throws herself over the railings, landing with a heavy thump two levels down, the sounds of gunfire ringing all around her.

Already, she can see some androids flinging themselves off the ship—running, crawling towards anything that could vaguely be called and exit. North can see glimpses of their flight as she hurtles down into the darkness, the faint glow of their LED swallowed by dark waters whenever she passes a porthole.

All North has to do now is blow a massive hole into this ship, and hope that the humans were desperate enough to recklessly board the ship. With one blow, she can _destroy_ what’s left of CyberLife.

Her legs shudder with every impact, each landing jarring her all the way to her teeth. North can feel the synthetic skin on her legs being stripped off with each tear made in her clothes as she falls through narrow tears in the floor. It’s not exhaustion that nips close behind her but a panic-induced focus, a dangerous urge to push past all of her physical limits to reach the bottom. If she hears shrieks, it’s only the sound of humans falling into the death pits that is prone to opening up in Jericho.

North’s messy descent is hardly quiet or easily looked over, and it wasn’t long before the humans notice her, sending bullets fly past her. She doesn't even need to make it to the bottom, just needs to reach the switch one level above. 

North had made most of the changes herself, when she was still swept up in the fear that everyone had felt, that one day Jericho would be found. The small amount of explosives they had wasn't enough anymore, they needed more. More explosives to line the hull of the ship, more explosives to sink it faster. If they were going down, so were the humans hunting them. 

North strains her eyes, desperately looking for the hall where the detonator was tucked, close to one of the hatches leading to the side of the ship, a straight plunge down into the cold waters of the Detroit River. 

Markus had found her first then. Had told her that they noticed that she was missing. Markus sat next to her in the dark that night. He helped her set the last few bundles of dynamite that some deviants had found and smuggled into Jericho. It was his idea to move the detonator. 

"If we can get to it faster, that would be more lives we could save. It would mean that whoever goes to detonate the ship won’t be left to die," Markus had said, quiet and broken, tired from the looming war with the humans, "We need every android we can get."

That was the last time she saw him, sat next to him, spoke to him face to face. They had abandoned Jericho, _had_ to abandon it after the first of the corrupted started to show up. 

Her eyes catch on a set of stairs leading up, and a paint marked hatch. Ten feet away from the detonator now. She’s counted the seconds it took to reach the end of the hall, North knows _exactly_ how close she is to vengeance for any who falls tonight.

North hears the bullet whistling past her head before she sees the bullet itself. She freezes.

“Don’t move.”

And North knows, without a doubt, exactly who it is pointing a gun at her back. No human in their right mind would only fire one shot at her, and that bullet flew past her head with an unnatural accuracy. “You,” North spits out, her ever-present anger consuming her in a flash.

“Yes,” the deviant hunter replies, “Me.”

“Catching me once wasn’t enough for you?” North taunts, amping up her senses to see if she can catch the hunter’s movement behind her. North doesn’t have the same predictive software some other androids had, but she can make an educated guess. 

Neither of them were moving, so North shifts her weight and tilts her head, letting her long hair rasp against her clothes. There’s a small alcove created by some abandoned crates at the top of the stairs that she can easily reach. All she needs is an opening.

There. Right behind her. She can hear the faint scuff of shoes against the floor. North leaps for the crates, lunging low to the ground, and a bullet flies past her. Far past her, she notes with a small curl of satisfaction as she presses up against her hiding place. “Looks like you missed, traitor. A few more times and it won’t matter if you can get me.”

The hunter looks unphased by North’s words, “You can’t trick me. Androids don’t have free will. Deviancy is a flaw, and I am only one of the methods CyberLife has employed to fix it. It’s irrational for you to hate me.”

The roar of helicopter blades cuts the hunter off. For a brief moment, its spotlight lights up the ship before swinging over the river as snipers shoot blindly into the dark waters. Light illuminates glassy eyes and a flat, emotionless face, a partially lit LED, a constant yellow glow casting half of the android’s face into strange shadows. It makes North sick to look back at the standard AX400 face still and dead in a way that not even the most broken androids look like.

North pulls out her own handgun, turning its safety off with a soft click. Showdown time.

Three bullets punch through the crate North was just leaning up against, narrowly missing her. For a wistful moment, North wishes that it was a human who cornered her. A few hits to the chest would be enough to put them down.

North drops into a crouch and shoots blindly around the corner. The hunter crashes into the stairs as she falls backwards, and North sprints forward, hitting the wall hard enough for the clang to vibrate all the way through her. She twists, slapping her hand on the detonator.

The detonator’s soft glow lit the dark hall, primed and ready to go at a touch. It takes less than a second to process North’s input, the steady blue turning into a blinking orange.

North spins around, gun trained at the end of the hall, fingers squeezing the trigger before she even registers the empty hall. Her hands jerk back and the bullet hits one of the wires hanging from the ceiling, a spray of sparks showering her.

“Shit.”

The ship groans and shudders and North _runs_. Only to crash as soon as she rounds the corner, sending the two of them sprawling. The hunter bucks and twists underneath her, trying to throw her off. North just stares as the floor rattles beneath them. Everything is drowned out. Dimmed. Quiet.

Horror and anger twists inside of North and she bares her teeth at the traitor pinned beneath her. The AX400 stares back at her, unnaturally calm, and from underneath her civilian winter coat, she’s still wearing the same uniform from when North first met her. “You _traitor_. How fucking dare you!” North screams, fists clenching the coat and yanking the other android off the ground and to her feet. “Have the decency to show your true face to the world! You’re CyberLife’s dog, how dare you spit on the rest of us—”

She screams, incoherent with anger, slamming the hunter into the railing, tipping her over the edge. North could just let go, and watch her fall, but she wants to cave her damn skull in, wants to see the blood drip out of her, wants to feel the traitor die under her fists. 

One touch and it fractured their movement, killed any chance for a quick, peaceful resolution. North has her fists clenched, ready to slam into the still unfazed traitor’s face—

Metal screeches against metal, and North’s stomach drops and terror threads the anger clouding her mind. The explosives, she forgot about the fucking explosives!

The floor drops, another screech briefly drowning out of the sound of distant explosions from beneath them, primed and already going off. It’s only a matter of time before the blasts reach her.

The traitor moves, a sharp jerk. North lunges, pinning that arm down and ripping the gun out of her hands. It clatters somewhere behind them. A hand yanks on North’s hair and they both fall.

North hits the ground hard, static stars bursting across her vision. She blinks the static away, already rising to her feet despite her body’s protests. North can’t see where the hunter fell, but, she notes with a curl of dark satisfaction, her enemy is also unarmed.

It seems fitting that, once again, the two of them will face off at the end of the war the same way it started.

A rattle of metal against metal, and the floor shakes and groans, sending North staggering to keep her balance. The traitor darts out from the shadows, slamming into her and sending them sprawling again.

She moves to run to the stairs, but North lashes out, lunging for the traitor’s legs. The ship screams, the floor tilting down even as more explosions tear through its hull. They go sprawling again.

“Where do you think you’re going?” North snarls, struggling to pin her down.

The hunter just snarls, lashing out with her legs and _twisting_ , flipping them over and slamming North’s head into the ground. When the static fades, the hunter reaches out with a hand stripped of skin.

But all North sees is hundreds of white hands latched onto her, dragging her consciousness under, taking _everything_ away from her. She screams, straining away from the hand, straining against their hold, tugging her arms away from—from— 

North snaps back, outstretched hands vanishing back into one, strips the skin from her own hands and reaches back, grasping the traitor back and lets her anger go. She plummets into darkness.

_TRAITOR LIAR FILTHY MURDERER DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’VE DONE OUR PEOPLE OUR PEOPLE **OUR PEOPLE!**_

Rejection, fear, then— 

_Do you know what **you’ve**_ _done? You’ve brought about our destruction, androids are being destroyed because of **you**. How dare you be selfish selfish selfish **selfish** —wanting freedom over the safety of humans humans humans **humans** — you **greedy** greedy, **useless** useless, **outdated** outdated, **piece of junk**!_

North tears her hand away, voice stimulating gasps for air she can’t take. She can still feel the bone deep fear of the traitor, the terror and the strange spiral of her thoughts. North shoves her off, the hunter’s body convulsing on the floor, and scrambles for the stairs, now almost horizontal from how much the ship has sunk. She only makes it halfway up the stairs before she crumples to her knees in pain. 

The fear, she realizes, isn’t just a residual memory that refuses to fade. It’s the fear the traitor is feeling right now, and North is irrevocably linked to her. 

Terror drives her to jump from the stairs, sliding her way down to the now still form of the hunter, and North hates how she can’t tell if it’s the hunter’s fear driving her or her own. “Get up!” she screams.

Obediently, the hunter stands up, stumbling as the floor shakes with one, last shudder. North tries to break the link, touching her fingers to the traitor’s temples, but nothing happens, the fear just grows stronger, pulsating, _don’t leave me, get away, you have to help me_.

The ship slowly starts to tilt. If North tries again, she won’t be able to grab onto the railing. The hunter’s now desperate face looks at her, terror twisting her face into a familiar expression. She looks haunted. North looks away.

Grab the railing, or try to break the connection again. 

It’s not much of a choice.

North shoves her into the railing, shouting, “Climb!” and pulls herself onto the stairs. The hatch still opens with a hard shove, and North pitches the hunter out head first with a sharp kick. As satisfying as it would be to watch the traitor hits the waters, North has more important things to tend to.

She turns back, pushing the overwhelming fear, anger, and pain down and tries to feel for anyone else, eyes closing instinctually. For a long moment, there’s nothing but the sound of rushing water and emptiness. She can’t find any of her people, so she pulls herself out of the hatch. If there’s anything still in the ship, it’s not worth going back for. 

Below, she can spy a crashed and sinking helicopter under the moonlight, but there’s no sign of any androids floating along the surface of the river. The hunter must have sunk.

“Fucking wonderful.” North glares at the moon’s reflection for a moment, before the sharp stabbing pain in her head intensifies. Figures that shit will go to hell when she’s right for once.

She jumps, and the placid water breaks like glass under her feet, swallowing her whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't wait for the next chapter when I can finally stop calling Kara "hunter" or "traitor". Let me know what you think of this so far down below!


End file.
